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Effective Decoding Strategies To Improve Reading

Thursday, October 18, 2018

Many teachers
are familiar with decoding strategies that may emphasize the use of picture clues,
meaning and self-monitoring. Sometimes these decoding activities are even given
cute nicknames to help students remember.

While we want students to monitor our students and their reading for accuracy to make sure it makes sense, often these kinds of decoding strategies taught typically in younger grades barely touch decoding skills or WORSE, they may call a child's eyes and attention AWAY from the text, which is the opposite of what we want to do, especially for budding or struggling readers.

Students absolutely need additional tools to solve unknown words in reading. There are a number of
important strategies that will help students decode effectively and will sustain them over time, no matter what grade they're in or how old they are. Let's dive into decoding strategies that are suitable for all children and adults.

The following decoding strategies have long been used within the Orton-Gillingham lesson plan as part of the Orton-Gillingham approach, but anyone can utilize them as part of their structured literacy framework.

·Build a strong foundation for phonological awareness FIRST.

The first thing to
keep in mind is the importance of a strong foundation of phonological
awareness. Students need to be able to hear the differences between two sounds,
break a word into its individual sounds and blend those sounds. There is a
tendency to teach phonological awareness only in Kindergarten and 1st
grade and to move on whether or not students have understood the concepts.
Research has shown us that effective phonological awareness instruction not
only involves instruction in advanced phonemic awareness concepts such as
manipulating phonemes but teaching these phonological skills to the point of
overlearning and automaticity is key.

When a student is
faced with an unknown word, this decoding strategy is often my first step. By locating vowels,
then syllable divisions and determining syllable types, students are able to
break a word into bite size pieces. This is an area in which many interventions
fall short. Students learn to break a word into syllables orally, but not how
to divide the printed word.Read this six-part syllable blog series for more tips.

The vowels are the
trickiest parts of most words for most students. By locating and marking the
vowels, it not only facilitates syllable division, but also pronunciation and
decoding. It is often useful to teach students the breve and macron markings so
that they can mark vowels with the correct sound. Saying the vowel sound before
attempting to blend the word is often also helpful. Read this six-part syllable blog series for more tips.

·Looking for familiar spelling patterns

Looking for familiar
spelling patterns such as digraphs, blends, or chunks is also a key skill to
aid when decoding words. Students may make connections from known words to new words that
share the same spelling pattern. If a student is familiar with the word cold, it
will assist them in reading a word like withhold or golden. It is also helpful
if students recognize patterns like silent letters, as in the word write, gnome
or knight, as a predictable decodable pattern.

It is important for students
to be proficient at both segmenting and blending as a phonemic awareness skill
done orally before different spelling patterns are introduced. If a student
does not know how to blend, they will not have the necessary skills to decode
unknown words. Similarly, the ability to segment a word into sounds is crucial
for spelling. Read, "The Top 6 Tips For Helping Children Blend Sounds" for more helpful tips to help children with blending.

·Identifying Affixes, base words and roots

In addition to
breaking a word into syllables, the ability to locate and understand affixes,
base words and roots is a critical part of reading and spelling more
complicated words. This understanding is very often key not only for spelling,
but also for pronunciation of words and word parts. This is especially helpful for decoding multisyllabic words

·Reinforce the use of meaning clues to self-monitor and confirm.

Even the most
proficient reader when decoding words is going to need to use context clues to read and understand
heteronyms, words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently and with
different meanings. Examples include: sow (female pig, plant seeds), wind (breeze/roll
up), bow (ribbon, front of a boat).

·Teach students to use their fingers to mask words and word parts.

Although marking up a word with pencil or even color is
undoubtedly helpful, there are times in every student’s life when this sort of
text marking is not an option. Teaching students to cover suffixes or syllables
with their fingers is an excellent substitute that makes decoding instruction more
multisensory and less visually overwhelming.

·Trace unknown syllables or tricky word parts.

If a student is struggling with decoding a particular word part,
I often have the student trace that part on the table or desk as they say the
sounds. Not only does tracing make the word part more memorable, but the act of
tracing triggers the kinesthetic and sensory pathways the student utilized when
they initially learned a word or phonogram.

There is much that we can do as instructors to set a student
with dyslexia or any struggling reader up for success. Choosing texts carefully so as to be highly
decodable and within the student’s zone of proximal development is key.
Choosing fonts and font size carefully can also contribute significantly to a
student’s success.

Moreimportantly, teaching a children to become metacognitive, (thinking about their thinking) when it comes to decoding in reading will serve them well in a variety of ways. Modeling the above decoding strategies to show a child how you can think your way through your reading to solve unknown words is a key first step. Then, transfer the task gradually onto them with less scaffolding from you. Finally, make it a healthy reading habit by asking children to utilize the decoding strategies independently. The gradual release of responsibility is developmentally appropriate and emotional sound teaching practice.

Remember it this way with your students:

I do it. You watch.

We do it. We watch each other and try it together.

You do it. I watch.

By filling our students' reading toolboxes with...

a number of
different decoding strategies for tackling unknown words,

explicitly teaching children
how to use them, and

providing abundant opportunities for practice,

our students
can confidently tackle reading tasks without resorting to relying on guessing or skipping words, which are quite honestly strategies I call flimsy. They don't hold up over time or get used incorrectly at best.

I tell my students that a strategy is a plan to do something WELL. Guessing or skipping words is not a plan for reading well. Let's empower our kids with efficient strategies that work, so when you ask them the all important question, "What do you do when you come to a word you don't know?" they can communicate exactly what to do.

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My name is Emily. I am a mom of four, and an educator who loves creating and blogging about all things literacy! As an Orton-Gillingham instructor, I seek to find and create resources to assist children with dyslexia. Thank you for stopping by my blog today!